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Historic Houston theater pummeled by Harvey not long after $46 million renovation

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Updated: 8:23 PM CDT Sep 1, 2017

Houston Chronicle; Alley Theatre

Houston Chronicle; Alley Theatre

SOURCE: Houston Chronicle; Alley Theatre

Historic Houston theater pummeled by Harvey not long after $46 million renovation

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Updated: 8:23 PM CDT Sep 1, 2017

Dean Gladden is about to venture downstairs into the Alley Theatre. But before he takes a step down, the company's managing director asks the group he's leading to turn on their cell phone lights.

"And I hope you're wearing the right kind of shoes," he says, alluding to the vaunted downtown theater's flooded lower level, where more than ten feet of water once pooled during Hurricane Harvey's catastrophic downpour that caused severe damage on the city's Theater District.

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Houston Chronicle; Alley Theater

Productions across town have been postponed or cancelled as organizations prioritize cleanup and restoration. Here in the Alley Theatre, a playhouse with national acclaim, the future can't begin until the present damage has been inspected. It's a somber action, partly because the Alley is two years removed from a $46.5 million renovation that revamped much of this flooded area.

Houston Chronicle; Alley Theatre

Gladden beckons his party. The tunnel that leads down to the Alley's Neuhaus Theatre is pitch black, so the first impression of the downstairs lobby area isn't anything you can see, but rather the swish-swish-swish of construction workers wading through the water, the patter of water droplets leaking from the ceiling — and the smell.

Houston Chronicle; Alley Theatre

What starts off as a sensation of the nose and throat soon turns into a full-body experience — a dizzying mixture of rotting wood, rotting paper, infested carpet, swamp-soaked chairs, sewage, bacteria and humidity. The lobby had been entirely submerged in slimy, green-blue-black water since Sunday, allowing the walls and ceilings to soften and melt. Pinch your nose and you can still smell the rot through your mouth.

Houston Chronicle; Alley Theatre

"As a managing director, you always think of the worst possible thing that can happen," Gladden says. "This is the worst possible thing."

Houston Chronicle; Alley Theatre

Construction workers, wearing masks, tell the awestruck explorers to be careful and not to breathe in the air. These workers, from Blackmon Mooring and W.S. Bellows Construction, are led by Alley Theatre General Manager Ten Eyck Swackhamer in a separate tour to assess the work ahead of them. But Gladden's party marches on.

Houston Chronicle; Alley Theatre

The scene is difficult to convey with words. Walls have fallen down in chunks. The ceilings are all peeling downward, their shapes distorted like ice cream melting in summer. Some rooms have doors blocked by debris that can't be entered. Pianos and tables and large machinery are turned upside down, some stuck in strange, gravity-defying positions. Flotsam everywhere floats on the ground.

Houston Chronicle; Alley Theatre

Some of the wreckage is hard to identify. Communications Director Whitney Spencer, shining her light toward the shadow of large and long rectangular box lying upside down in the Neuhaus Theatre, asks what it is.

Houston Chronicle; Alley Theatre

"It's the first row of seats," Gladden says.

Houston Chronicle; Alley Theatre

An entire row of seats has toppled over. Board President Butch Mach, taking long, deliberate strides, climbs up a section of seats. He swipes his finger on the top of a seat on the fifth row — "It's dry here" — and then the bottom.

Houston Chronicle; Alley Theatre

"That's wet," Mach says. "So you can tell that's how high the water went. So hopefully the lights up on the ceiling and the control booth are dry — yep."

Houston Chronicle; Alley Theatre

Gladden isn't sure where the water came from. On Sunday, playwright Rajiv Joseph, in Houston for the upcoming world premiere of his play "Describe the Night" at the Alley, captured footage of Texas Avenue turned into a river, with water running nearly to the top of the steps to the Alley.

Houston Chronicle; Alley Theatre

But the water didn't breach the main lobby, instead likely entering the basement from somewhere in the underground tunnel system — the same water that annihilated the lower level of Birraporretti's, a nearby restaurant.

Houston Chronicle; Alley Theatre

How the flooding happened is just one of the many questions without a complete answer today.

What's the schedule for recovery? Swackhamer, estimating 8 to 14 days of salvage work, expects a full schedule by end of next week.

Houston Chronicle; Alley Theatre

How much is the damage worth? Though this is the first time contractors have been able to inspect the scene, Alley management knows it's in the several millions. Their complete renovation two years ago cost more than $46 million, but there are also other elements that add to the toll, like 68 years of production history lost in the destruction of the Alley's prop storage, that can never be recovered.

Houston Chronicle; Alley Theatre

Later in the day, props master Karin Rabe would mention the tens of thousands of props that were destroyed.

In the storage room, unseen amounts of props lay in waste. Mach wants to reach the back part of the room because he saw something he can't get out of his head. Earlier that day, he took a preliminary tour and found a lone doll lying on a table, her body splayed helplessly, as if she were acting a scene in a tragedy. To get to the room, the party takes a dangerous path.

On the ground of the laundry room, white detergent mixes with the mud water, creating a goop that almost makes some of the party trip. A rack has fallen over. Hundreds of programs for the Alley's recent production "39 Steps" have meshed into a single wet mound, right next to the Alley's entire collection of yet-to-be-printed tickets that have all nearly dissolved, forming a thick layer of white mush in the water.

The group forges on, wading past the broken machinery of the laundry room and into the back side of the Alley's vast prop storage room. An ornate Chinese vase filled with leaves and water sits upright — here, everyone notices the upright objects right away.

Right next to it is the doll. It's a gem of a creation, a Victorian era doll featured in the Alley's beloved "A Christmas Carol." It's the doll that's given to the Scrooge, which later manifests into an eerily beautiful ghost. A steam clock, a giant candy cane, Scrooge's chair — these other iconic "Carol" items also lay toppled in the water.

The smell changes room to room. The bathrooms reek of sewage, while the tunnel facilities have the acidic smell of kerosene, which had leaked from the generators into the water. The substance clings onto the pants and shoes of the visitors.

The party turns around when Swackhamer says electrical parts are still hot inside one of the rooms. He closes the door, shooing the party up the steps toward Birraporetti's. As workers sweep the water down the hallways, it gushes down the steps, causing one of the tour members to nearly trip.

"Look at this," Gladden says, pointing toward the break room. It's a champagne glass, filled with water, somehow standing perfectly upright four feet above the ground against the door. Its posture, in contrast with the chaos of the room, feels bizarre, even inappropriate.

"Looks like one of those undersea shots of the Titanic," Mach says.

From the random destruction of Hurricane Harvey, Gladden and Mach are finding the accidents — the doll, the champagne glass — worth remembering. They're not quite silver linings, nor distractions from the heartbreak, but rather ways to simplify and encapsulate a loss that, for now, defies comprehension.

Back outside, production manager Ray Inkel says he's invested in the objects of the Alley, but appeals emotional when human loss enters the conversation. Two staff members were forced to evacuate their homes, Inkel says. His face reddening, he begins wiping his hands on his eyes. He's crying. Apologizing, he leaves the steps of the Alley.

Rabe looks on as he walks away. She agrees with his sentiment that the things never matter as much as people.

"It's stuff that has a lot of meaning, but it's all stuff. It can be replaced," she says. "We're here."